understanding how all this works and that the cliff is not a cliff and that the deficit is not going to go up. it is actually going to go down. those things are very important to understand, here, to see through the prism and get what's going on. >> congresswoman, i feel like the part that was so helpful to me about david's text as i've been sort of trying to think through this fiscal cliff, we often hear from elected leaders about kitchen table politics. we saw the president go to the kitchen table this week. these sort of kitchen table economics of how we are paying to subsidize these corporations does not seem to be part of the conversation happening in washington. >> you have a lot of congress people, especially on the democratic side, who realize the true meaning of what each and every one of us is paying for. i'll give you an example. carolyn maloney, right here, of new york, she authored the credit card bill of rights. i know because i was her number two. we pushed very hard to get this bill through. now, it could have been a lot harder. it started out a lot stronger. there ar